I know whenever I post about space launches etc on the news page they get postponed, but surely even I can't stop this one from happening. Asteroid 2000 QW7 is going to pass close to Earth tonight, at about 9:54pm Sydney time. More info here: An asteroid as wide as a skyscraper is tall will glide harmlessly past Earth tomorrow night (Sept. 14). Asteroid 2000 QW7 is between 1,000 and 2,000 feet wide (300 to 600 meters) and will fly by at a distance of 3 million miles (5 million kilometers) from our planet at 7:54 p.m. EDT, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The asteroid, moving 14,361 mph (23,100 km/h), poses no danger to Earth on this pass.

There's a cool new 50c coin which lets you crack a Cold War style code. The 50 cent coin features a unique ‘one-time pad’ key – similar to those used by operatives during the Cold War – to encrypt and decode secret messages. And you have the chance to solve it. As part of the 70th anniversary celebrations, The Mint also launched a ‘coincryption’ competition for those who crack the code on their coins.

There's some new iPhones - 3 of them. Apple on September 10 unveiled the iPhone 11, its new flagship $699 smartphone that offers a range of powerful features at an affordable price tag. Sold alongside the more expensive iPhone 11 Pro and the iPhone 11 Pro Max, the iPhone 11 is going to be the iPhone perfect for most people. The iPhone 11 succeeds the iPhone XR, and it features a 6.1-inch LCD display that Apple calls a "Liquid Retina HD Display." It features a 1792 x 828 resolution at 326ppi, a 1400:1 contrast ratio, 625 nits max brightness, True Tone support for adjusting the white balance to the ambient lighting, and wide color support for true-to-life colors. Discussion in this thread.

I missed this last week, but thieves in Perth have made off with $300k worth of Apple gadgets. Nearly 45 minutes later, the group arrived at Garden City in Booragoon and smashed the glass window of the complex's Apple store, threatening security staff before stealing $300,000 worth of tech, mostly mobile phones. The men are believed to have been wearing dark-coloured clothing. Two cars linked to the break-ins were found torched in Perth's southern suburbs on Tuesday morning. Discussion here.

The Australian Electoral Commission are grumpy with Google for lack of transparency over political ads. Dr Michael Jensen, a political communications researcher at the University of Canberra, noted Google took five days to officially respond to the agency's query. He said this is an unnecessarily long time, compared with the lifespan of advertisements online. "For example, the duration of ads that the Russian internet agency used in the US context in 2016 ... typically ads would appear during especially the last phase of the election for just two days," he said. "When you're waiting at least five days for a response from Google, you're not able to interrupt an influence operation."

Meanwhile the ACCC's decision to block a Vodafone / TPG merger has ended up in court. TPG’s counsel Ruth Higgins, SC, told the court on the opening day of the three-week trial the ACCC position was built on the "fallacy" that TPG will have the ability to become Australia’s fourth mobile operator by building a network it says it doesn't want and can't afford to build. In outlining her argument, Dr Higgins invoked the hit Kevin Costner 1989 film Field of Dreams, where the Costner’s character builds a baseball diamond in his corn field to reunite the ghosts of his favourite players in a final game to describe the ACCC’s legal stance.

Babeltech have a VR shootout between the Vive Pro and the Oculus Rift. We present a five-game cross-platform VR performance showdown between the Oculus Rift CV1 and the Vive Pro. We benchmark using the RX 5700 XT Anniversary Edition versus the RX 2060 SUPER and RTX 2070 SUPER Founders Editions. That follows on from this earlier comparison of the three video cards in twelve VR games.

The ACT is looking to build a huge battery system to stabilise power in the area. The proposed battery would be able to store about one-third as much power as the Hornsdale reserve in South Australia, which is the world's biggest lithium-ion battery. Mr Rattenbury said the ACT facility, which would take about two years to build, would help stabilise the electricity network and allow Canberra to operate solely on renewable power.

The Govt has blocked 8 websites that still host footage of the Christchurch attacks. The eSafety Commissioner has been given responsibility for directing which sites need to be blocked by the telcos, after giving them the chance to take down the offending content. These powers have now been implemented for the first time, with the eSafety Commissioner ordering Australian telcos to block eight websites still hosting video of the Christchurch attack or the attacker’s manifesto.

WD has announced some more huge HDDs for datacentres. Numerous reports claimed these drives are the first to feature WD's Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording (MAMR) technology, but a spokesperson told us they "can not disclose specific details about which energy assist technologies are used in each drive." WD said the drives are part of its Capacity Enterprise HDDs portfolio that ranges from a six-disk 10TB drive with an air-based HDD to a nine-disk 20TB drive with a helium-based HDD. The Ultrastar DC HC550 CMR HDD will be available in 16TB and 18TB capacities, and the Ultrastar DC HC650 SMR HDD will be available in a 20TB capacity, sometime in the first half of 2020.

Maybe you could get one delivered by drone, if you live in Brisbane. Indeed, that is it’s business model, with the company – owned by a subsidiary of internet giant Google – aiming to deliver small items on demand to residents without them having to leave their homes. The company has already announced it will begin its Queensland rollout in the Logan suburbs of Crestmead and Marsden, however they’ve now confirmed it will happen by the end of the month.

Intel have been taking aim at Ryzen's heat and reliability, but TomsHardware investigated for themselves. Having reached a dead-end in our attempts to get an official explanation from AMD about the matter, the only thing left to do was to test to see if we can spot a change to the temperature thresholds in the various firmware revisions. We can't verify the impact on reliability, as CPUs don't have a wearout indicator like we see with SSDs. However, the most logical starting point is to determine if there were intentional changes to boost behavior.

Meanwhile there's a statement on Medium about the issue from Ryan Shrout. I assumed this was under his PC Perspective hat but reading the article I realise he is now the Chief Performance Strategist at Intel. I obviously haven't been refreshing LinkedIn enough. :)

Android 10 is out now, on certain devices. Quality time. It’s different for everyone. For some, it’s unplugging on the weekends. For others, it’s spending hours video-chatting with your best friend. Android 10 gives you the tools to find that balance.

Melbourne is getting a huge eSports venue. It’ll be called Fortress Melbourne and will span 2,700+ square metres across two floors. It’ll open its doors in early 2020 and will house gaming PCs, console gaming suits, dedicated streamer pods, RPG and tabletop game play area, function rooms, a restaurant, two bars and a 200 seat purpose built esports arena with production facilities.

OCInside have a guide to overclocking Apollo Lake and Gemini Lake CPUs. Overclocking an inexpensive Intel N3450 Apollo Lake or Intel N4100 Gemini Lake CPU is officially not possible due to the locked multiplier, but we have looked into this issue in order to provide a little bit more performance for users of slower PC systems and have even written a small OC Tool. So from now on you can not only overclock a common Intel CPU, but also get some more out of a low budget Intel Apollo Lake system.

TechSpot meanwhile looked at Mesh WiFi systems. Mesh Wi-Fi routers are a recent trend in the networking market and aim to bring some of the advanced features of enterprise networking systems to the consumer. How well do they work, and what performance benefit do you get by switching to one? We'll take a deep dive today into the top players on the market to find out.

Ryzen 3000 owners will enjoy the news of fixed boost performance from AMD - but it's probably not a huge difference. At any rate, AMD has admitted there’s some kind of problem with boost speed here, although the statement still takes the time to clarify that the boosts users achieve will depend on all sorts of variables (which is a fair point to make, particularly regarding the cooling solution used with the CPU, and related issues like case airflow).

Repairability has been something of a bugbear for Apple devices for a while, but they have now announced broader independent repair shop availability of parts and instructions. Repair businesses with a technician certified through Apple can apply to join the Independent Repair Provider program for free. Once approved, they can, according to Apple, buy genuine Apple parts at the same cost as the more than 5,000 repair stores in Apple’s Authorized Service Providers program. Independent shops also gain access to “tools, training, repair manuals and diagnostics,” which presumably would allow them to overcome issues like unverified batteries, Touch ID authorization (a.k.a. Error 53), missing True Tone displays, and other issues that have dogged third-party Apple repair.

Here's a trailer for an upcoming Bill Gates documentary on Netflix. This three-part documentary tells Bill Gates’ life story, in-depth and unfiltered, as he pursues unique solutions to some of the world’s most complex problems. From Academy Award-winning director Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth, He Named Me Malala).

Apple iPhone users have been exposed to a widespready spyware campaign. "This is definitely the most serious iPhone hacking incident that's ever been brought to public attention, both because of the indiscriminate targeting and the amount of data compromised by the implant," said former US government hacker Jake Williams, the president of Rendition Security. Announced late on Thursday by Google researchers, the last of the vulnerabilities were quietly fixed by Apple by February, but only after thousands of iPhone users were believed to have been exposed over more than two years. More info here, thanks IntelInside.

CASA are investigating video of a man fishing from a drone. Not fishing WITH a drone, but FROM a drone! In the vision, taken at Upper Coliban Reservoir in central Victoria, the man, with beer at hand, is carried for several metres above the water, catches a fish and eventually returns to shore.CASA spokesman Peter Gibson said there were serious safety risks involved with what appeared in the footage.

Meanwhile, this from Skymaster: Here's one to follow up on the MacBook recall posted in June. Qantas and Virgin have banned MacBooks from Checked-In luggage and now only to be carry on. The FAA has banned all affected models from all fights in the US. So the suggestion is - if you have a MacBook - consider your flying options and make sure you know the rules.

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